Author of mystery letter to Lincoln identified

Thursday

Jan 2, 2014 at 10:02 PMJan 2, 2014 at 11:38 PM

The author of a fragmented letter found in a mouse’s nest inside the wall of the Lincoln Home more than 25 years ago has been identified. Workers repairing the home found part of the mystery letter, as well as other fragments, inside the north kitchen wall.

By Chris DettroStaff Writer

The author of a fragmented letter found in a mouse’s nest inside the wall of the Lincoln Home more than 25 years ago has been identified.

Workers repairing the home found part of the mystery letter, as well as other fragments, inside the north kitchen wall. Although stained and damaged by mice, the letter clearly had been sent to the future president in 1846.

But by whom?

The author of the letter, which has a Quincy dateline of March 10, 1846, has been misidentified at least once.

But now The Papers of Abraham Lincoln, through research by associate editor Stacy Pratt McDermott, has found that the letter was written by Andrew Johnston, a newspaper editor, lawyer and fan of Lincoln’s poetry.

McDermott compared the handwriting on the letter found in Lincoln’s wall to another letter Johnston wrote to Lincoln in 1865 and to a note Johnston wrote in 1872 on an old letter from Lincoln. The handwriting matched perfectly.

“Discovering the identity of the author and connecting the letter to a part of Lincoln’s life about which we know very little illustrates the importance of the editing work we are doing at the Papers of Abraham Lincoln, and it is an example of why I love my job,” McDermott said.

Poetry, politics

Johnston, a native of Richmond, Va., published the Quincy Whig and was, like Lincoln, a member of the Whig Party in the 1840s.

He also was an uncle of George Pickett, a young man who got into West Point with the help of Lincoln’s law partner and went on to become a Confederate general. Today, he is best remembered for leading the doomed “Pickett’s Charge” at the Battle of Gettysburg.

The four letter fragments were found in 1987, when the Lincoln Home National Historic Site underwent a full restoration. The editors of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln scanned the document in 2006 and transcribed it as best they could in 2007.

What was left in the fragments were passages like this: “... ur letter, enclosing the poe ... earnest ... th undiminis ... once ... lson’s house, where I happ ... to be ... ter. My auditors were as much pleased ... ll agreed that the author of su ... poetry.”

The letter’s mention of poetry was a clue that Johnston might have been the author. He and Lincoln exchanged several letters about poetry and politics.

Lincoln had written to Johnston on Feb. 25, 1846, to send him a piece of poetry that Johnston had requested. He also asked if Johnston would like to see a poem he was completing.

The letter found at the Lincoln Home is Johnston’s response, dated March 10, 1846. He thanks Lincoln for the poem and asks if Lincoln was the author.

Lincoln responded on April 18 that he was not but would “give all I am worth, and go in debt, to be able to write so fine a piece as I think that is.”

Lincoln’s poetry was good enough for Johnston, who published Lincoln’s “My Childhood-Home I See Again” and “Matthew Gentry” in April 1847.

‘Considered junk’

Piecing together the exchange between Lincoln and Johnston required studying documents from three separate sources — Princeton University, which has the first letter; the Lincoln Home and its fragments of Johnston’s response; and an early collection of Lincoln documents that transcribes Lincoln’s reply. The original of that third letter is now in the hands of an unknown private collector.

“This discovery shows the value of careful examination of individual documents, the handwriting on them and their relationship with other documents,” said Papers of Abraham Lincoln director Daniel W. Stowell. “It points out the importance of what we’re doing trying to piece together all this correspondence.”

Stowell said he believes that most, if not all, of the other fragments found inside the wall have been identified.

“This particular one had not because part of the signature had been chewed off,” he said.

Many of the documents Lincoln received in the years before he was elected president were burned, Stowell said.

“They were cleaning house before he went to Washington in 1847 and again in 1861, and they were considered junk,” he said. “This survived because it was put in a wall for whatever reason.”

He said he’s heard two theories on how the letter got in the wall in the first place.

One suggests that it may have been used for insulation, and the other lays blame on mischievous boys known to stick things in cracks in the walls.

“Though the document itself is incomplete, it nonetheless gives us a more complete picture of one of the most remarkable literary correspondences in Lincoln’s life,” said Samuel P. Wheeler, research historian with the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum and an authority on Lincoln’s poetry.

“It illuminates an interesting part of Lincoln’s career in that he enjoyed poetry and tried his own hand at poetry,” Stowell said.

The letter once was identified as likely being written by Orville Hickman Browning, a Lincoln friend and the man appointed to Congress in 1861 to finish the term of Stephen A. Douglas. Browning was appointed secretary of the interior in 1866 after Lincoln’s death.

“He (Browning) was from Quincy and Mrs. Browning was mentioned in the text, so it’s easy to see why someone might have thought that,” Stowell said.